Fda Food Recall Scraper

Overview

The FDA Food Recall Scraper collects food recall enforcement reports from the openFDA API, a public government data source maintained by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This actor retrieves structured recall data including recall numbers, company names, recall reasons, product descriptions, distribution patterns, and classification levels. The data covers food safety enforcement actions across the United States.

Features

• Query FDA food recall enforcement reports by keyword (e.g., salmonella, listeria, allergen, undeclared)
• Filter results by US state using standard 2-letter state codes
• Retrieve detailed recall information including product descriptions and distribution patterns
• Automatic pagination through the openFDA API to collect large result sets
• Built-in rate limiting to respect API usage guidelines
• Uses the official openFDA public API with no authentication required
• Works with empty input using sensible defaults
• Export results in JSON, CSV, Excel, or other formats via Apify datasets

Input Configuration

Parameter	Type	Description	Default
searchTerms	array	Keywords to search in recall reports	["salmonella", "listeria"]
maxResults	integer	Maximum results per search term	200
state	string	US state filter (2-letter code)	"" (all states)

Output Format

Each result contains the following fields:

• recallNumber - Unique FDA recall identifier
• recallingFirm - Company issuing the recall
• reason - Reason for the recall
• productDescription - Description of the recalled product
• distributionPattern - Geographic distribution of the product
• status - Current status of the recall (Ongoing, Completed, Terminated)
• classification - FDA classification level (Class I, II, or III)
• recallInitiationDate - Date the recall was initiated
• state - State where the recalling firm is located
• dataSource - Source of the data (FDA openFDA API)
• apiEndpoint - API endpoint used

Use Cases

This scraper is valuable for food safety researchers, regulatory compliance teams, supply chain managers, and journalists investigating food safety incidents. Common applications include monitoring specific contamination types across regions, tracking recall trends by company or product category, building food safety dashboards, and conducting due diligence on food suppliers.

Pricing

This actor uses a pay-per-event pricing model. You are charged $0.30 per 1,000 results delivered. There are no additional platform fees beyond compute costs.

Limitations

• The openFDA API may not include all historical recalls; coverage varies by year
• API rate limits apply (approximately 240 requests per minute without an API key)
• Search is limited to the reason_for_recall field; broader searches may require multiple terms
• Some recall reports may have incomplete fields depending on FDA data entry

For more information about running actors on the Apify platform, visit the Apify documentation.